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OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

economist.com

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Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#721
post #396
post #139

AI is going to be a highly-competitive, extremely capital-intensive commodity market that ends up in a race to the bottom competing on cost and efficiency of delivering models that have all reached the same asymptotic performance in the sense of intelligence, reasoning, etc. The simple evidence for this is that everyone who has invested the same resources in AI has produced roughly the same result. OpenAI, Anthropic,…

Something nobody's talking about: OpenAI's losses might actually be attractive to certain investors from a tax perspective. Microsoft and other corporate investors can potentially use their share of OpenAI's operating losses to offset their own taxable income through partnership tax treatment. It's basically a tax-advantaged way to fund R&D - you get the loss deductions now while retaining upside optionality later. T…

OpenAI is a corporation, so their losses do not flow up to their owners.

Their investors, if publicly traded like Microsoft do have to take write-downs on their financial statements but those aren't realized losses for tax purposes. The only tax "benefit" Microsoft might get from the OpenAI investment is writing off the amount it invested if/when OpenAI goes bankrupt.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#722
post #561
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something nobody's talking about: OpenAI's losses might actually be attractive to certain investors from a tax perspective. Microsoft and other corporate investors can potentially use their share of OpenAI's operating losses to offset their own taxable income through partnership tax treatment. It's basically a tax-advantaged way to fund R&D - you get the loss deductions now while retaining upside optionality later. T…

None of this is how taxes work.

Correct, for tax purposes corporate losses remain with the corporation. Microsoft and the other owners don't get the benefit of OpenAI's losses. At best, they get to write off their investment in OpenAI if the company dissolves, at which point their maximum tax write-off is their capital investment.

Note: other people seem to be confused because companies can write off investments in corporate subsidiaries before the subsidiary is dissolved or sold...for book purposes. This creates what is known in the accounting world as a book-tax difference. If you have a few weeks to spare, look up tax provisions...

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#723
post #682

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So should we also not allow OpenAI to bundle the OpenAI model with the ChatGPT app Absolutely no one besides ChromeOS users are forced to use Chrome.

Anti-trust doesn’t have to involve force, but monopolistic behavior. Google has spent over a decade advertising Chrome on all their properties and has an unlimited budget and active desire to keep Chrome competitive. Mozilla famously needs Google’s sponsorship to stay solvent. Apple maintains Safari to have no holes in their ecosystem. Stop being silly defending trillion dollar companies that are actively making the…

And poor little under capitalized Microsoft and Apple couldn’t compete?

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EU doesnt collect income/corporate tax, the individual countries do. These big corps use holdings in low tax jurisdisctions like Ireland and Luxemburg, funnel all their EU subsidiaries’ revenues there and end up paying 0 tax in the individual EU countries. This system is actually legal, EU lawmakers should pass laws to prevent this.

And let us not forget the millions and billions the global IT corporations pay in the EU in form of social security taxes, income taxes, the jobs they create, and the further millions and billions in the form of purchases from local delivery companies, consultants, DC vendors, office suppliers, taxi companies, delivery companies, food and catering and all the other local EU-based companies who benefit from having the…

A small price to pay for having your democracy subverted by hostile propaganda distributed through social media, your politicians influenced by lobbying, and your smaller businesses killed by giant corporate oligopolies.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#725
post #713

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(I think) I get how venture capital works, my point is that the bullish story for openAI has them literally restructuring the global economy. It seems strange to me that people are making bets with relatively slim profit margins (an average of 500m on a 10b investment in your example) on such volatile and unpredictable events.

AI has a lot lower bar to clear to upend the tech industry compared to the global economy. Not being in on AI is an existential risk for these companies.

False.

The existential risk is in companies smoking the AI crackpipe that sama (begging your pardon) handed them, thinking it feels great and then projecting[1] that every investment will hit like the first, and continuing to buy the crack that they can't afford, and they investors can't afford, and their clients can't afford, their vendors can't afford, the grid can't afford, the planet can't afford, the American people can't afford, and sama[2] can't afford, _because it's crack_!

The wise will shut up and take the win on the slop com bubble.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chasing_the_dragon

[2]: For those following along at home, sama is Sam Altman, he was a part of the Y Combinator community a while back: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=sama

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI feels like a solution looking for a problem. The problem is increasing profits by replacing paid labor with something "good enough".

Isn’t this what industrialisation was always about?

Yes, and everything around us was replaced by something "good enough" from a factory unless you paid for real craftsmanship.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#727

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure. I'm fully aware that AI can be useful, especially once we move past LLMs. However, I do think that the majority (or mainstream) use of GenAI today is indeed not very useful or even harmful. And I do think that something like railroads are more useful by orders of magnitude.

> I do think that the majority (or mainstream) use of GenAI today is indeed not very useful or even harmful. What are you basing this opinion on?

The results that I'm seeing of what people are doing with GenAI. I don't really see the promised productivity gains.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#728

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get that this example is simplified, but doesn’t the maths here change drastically when the 5% changes by even a few percentage points? The error bars on Openais chance of succes are obviously huge, so why would this be attractive to accountants?

That's why you have armies of accountants rating stuff like this all day long. I'm sure they could show you a highly detailed risk analysis. You also don't count on any specific deal working, you count on the overall statistics being in your favour. That's literally how venture capital works.

This reminds me of the scene in Margin Call [1] when the analyst discovers that their assumptions for the risk of highly leveraged positions are inaccurate.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAWtcYOVbWw

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#729

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They also have one of the biggest negatives in that they abandon almost everything they build so it’s hard to get invested in thier products. I agree with the rest though

They don't abandon their money makers. That's the thing people don't get about the Google graveyard meme, they only cut things that obviously aren't working to make them more money.

Half of the things they build don't even have a chance to make money. But then people end up depending on their products and they they shut it down or sell it.

Re: OpenAI's cash burn will be one of the big bubble questions of 2026

#730

why does the article used words like burn and incinerate, implying that OpenAI is somehow making money disappear or something? They’re spending it; someone is profiting here, even if it’s not OpenAI. Is it all Nvidia?

Because typically one expect a return on investment with that level of spending. Not only have they run at a loss for years, their spending is expected to increase, with no path to profitability in sight.

Tbh this whole AI thing is probably a negative ROI but it will pay off. Even if the debt is written off the AI enhancements that this whole misallocation of capital created are now "sunk" and are here to stay - the assets and techniques have been built.

There's an element of arms race between players, and the genie is out of the bottle now so have to move with it. Game theory is more driving this than economics in the short term.

Marginal gains on top of these investments probably have a ROI now (i.e. new investments from this point).

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